Today, we are passing the last milestone on the way to KDE 4.1, a release that will be suitable for a larger audience than 4.0 has been. While it is not yet up to the features that people are used to from KDE 3.5, KDE 4.1 provides a significant amount of improvements over KDE 4.0, which some said was a bit of a bumpy ride. Sources and available packages are linked on the release info page.
KDE 4.1-rc1 is the only release candidate for KDE 4.1, which will be released on July 29th.

The development in trunk/ in Subversion has already been opened for feature development, which is going into KDE 4.2 (to be released in January), but developers are strongly encouraged to concentrate on bugfixing in the 4.1 branch for now. Do give RC1 a spin, file bugreports and fix things, there is only a week left until 4.1 is being tagged. Do have your changes in the 4.1 branch reviewed by your peers, though. Note that some users might still be suffering from performance problems with NVidia graphics chips. There is a page on Techbase that gives some more information about it. Make sure you report bugs via KDE's Bugzilla so they can be addressed and do not get lost.

Comments

Hi,
Thanks for the new release.. I am installing / testing it on my asus 900.. Is the panel autohide feature included.. I couldn't find anywhere to set it but was wondering if it was setable by editing the panel config file...

It can even be done during the 4.1 cycle as a plugin, after all, that's how Plasma is build. Maybe writing a Panel using Python so the user won't even have to compile stuff, or changing the current C++ code and offering it on kde-look.

That's pretty simple then. You rewrite the existing panel in Python/Kross (not that I think that the current C++/Qt API is more "intimidating" or quirky but if you say so!) , and write autohide as a plugin, upload it on kde-apps.org and give us the URL. And do it quickly please, before the 4.1 is released so you have less than a couple of weeks (don't forget to do extensively test it, my KDE 4.1 RC is fairly stable and I don't it crashing because of quick-and-dirty code) Go ahead and don't forget keep us updated with your progress, as well.

I would like to see two things on 4.1.x... (the second one on 4.1.0!) Panel autohide and multirow panel. I have 1280x1024 19" inch monitor. I use OpenSUSE 11.0 as distribution and KDE 4.1 RC1. I can get three window open and my panel is full.

Systray widget eats lots of space because you cant have two rows. Three icons in panel (dolphin, konqueror, kickoff) eats lots of space because I cant have those dolphin & konqueror as on two row. My three window panel eats all left space because I have only one row to use... so Please :)

If there's a whole bunch of companies who use your basement to make money with it, maybe they'll fix it.

Yeah my reply is kind of stupid and doesn't reflect the actual situation, but neither does yours. I agree some flamers in the forum are annoying with all their stupid negative comments, but it was not the case here. Give the guy a break. There's space in the forum for positive and negative remarks.

Yes, and if they don't, it doesn't get fixed. There's no difference between a commercial motivation (actually, my basement houses a bunch of stageshow props and costumes, so the community does use it) and a personal motivation. Both motivate development. Somebody random on the internet petulantly demanding that other people do something for them is seldom a motivation. In fact, just demanding that other people do things to make your computer work better is a pretty lousy tactic. Money and friendship go a long way -- I just helped a friend move to his new home last night, and I did it for friendship... I care about them because they have been nice to my wife and I. He could also have hired movers and paid them to move it.

Standing in front of my house (because I've helped people move) or in front of the moving companies building and demanding that we move him is a bad method. He was asking why people were so touchy. That's why.

It's not a matter of "he has no right to complain", it's a matter of explaining why he isn't making any headway with his demands. It is basic social or commerce interaction -- you have to be nice to people or pay them money (or some other kind of trade: a time investment for instance). Motivation for getting other people to help you is pretty simple. He made demands coupled with no *reason* to assist him ahead of anybody else with 10,000 different varied request. That's why people are touchy... those kinds of motivation free demands ("Do this for me because I need it") are way too common.

He seemed genuinely baffled, which is why I *was* giving the guy a break and explaining why he was getting the reaction he was.

Well I agree with everything you say, except with the part about him making demands. He just said he needed it, it's just a comment. I agree you were quite polite with him, but not with the explanation of the whole reaction because in my opinion it doesn't really fit what happened in this case. Anyway enough of drama I guess :)

everything was cool till you spoke of necessity, like a demand, like you are paying someone...

They will do it, the fastest they can, with the resources they have, I have no doubt about it. Touchy because of the negative spam comments that are flouting around everywhere. Demanding everything today! Because I need it! If you need it stick with 3.5.10 till 4.2 have that need of yours.

But yes, above is a over reaction to a simple request... and I understand your "com' on, your being too hard on me " :-D (not ironic)

And that is perfectly cool. We don't expect everyone to move to KDE4 with this release. For some it's good enough (or better) already others' pet features aren't there yet, those can be using KDE 3.5 just fine. Everybody happy :-)

We don't expect everyone to move to KDE4 with this release
others' pet features aren't there yet,

So much for a user question and for the remarks users make everywhere

Users have questions for "pet" feateures

Without those users none would have opensuse 11, they are all waiting for the boxed version.
Than the may ask questions because they paid for it.
Ok we will ask Novell to hide kde4 from every one till there will be a boxed version one can buy.
No more "pet" feature questions.

This "minor" setting is a Show Stopper for me with the KDE4 series as well. I have never wanted my screen real estate (no matter how big or small that may be) taken up by some static bar full of pictures on the screen.

Is there a long list of features somewhere on the KDE site that shows a list of what features are planned for the 4.2 (or later, or just whatever) release so I can keep an eye on this?

I have been hearing for a while that many features are now being aimed at 4.2 because they just missed the 4.1 window. Right after the 4.0 release, we were told that many things that just missed the 4.0 window would have to wait for 4.1, even if the code was in trunk right after 4.0 release.

After some griping, some of these features were "back-ported" to the 4.0.x releases.

I'm curious. If the feature does make it to trunk earlier enough, should new features be included in minor releases? Even 3.5.x releases added new features, and some would suggested that 4.x is missing enough new features that it would seem adding them sooner would be the way to go.

Is there a decision making process on when to hold back a new feature that exists in trunk?

generally we don't add any new features to patch level releases; in extreme situations we do, but we try and keep those to a "known stable" minimum. (some of the 4.0 backports definitely failed on that metric, unfortunately.)

another approach, which is likely more sane for things like panel hiding, is to provide patches for some of these features that can be applied by downstreams to 4.1.x but don't include them in official kde releases until 4.2.

Aaron, wasn't one of the initial ideas of Plasma being release-independent from KDE?

You know, it would be very, very, very (repeat this a lot) good if we could have plasma releases without having to change kdelibs.
Sure some features or plasmoids that required new changes in the libs would not be possible, but things that already are working in trunk today probally work just fine also with 4.1 libs - because the trunk probally is not *that* different from 4.1 yet.
For example, I've saw that tooltips are back.

Now that is not an easy thing, nor I believe *that* much important after KDE changed to 6 month release cycle (I'm loving this model, 4.1 being a GREAT release after 4.0 shows that it is working), but it would be fun :D

>I have been hearing for a while that many features are now being aimed at 4.2 because they just missed the 4.1 window. Right after the 4.0 release, we were told that many things that just missed the 4.0 window would have to wait for 4.1, even if the code was in trunk right after 4.0 release.<

Yes, and I guess that's normal in any softwareproject, right? Esp with a more time-based release schedule as we're trying to adopt...

About the decision making process - it's simple. No features are backported, only bugfixes.

We did add some features during the 3.5.x series because KDE 4.0 took a while, and we added features to 4.0.x because it wasn't really targeted to those who need a super-stable release anyway. It is not impossible there will be features during the 4.1.x series, but I don't think it is very likely. After all, even though some minor things are missing, for 95% of the users, KDE 4.1 is pretty much on par (and of course in many ways superior) to 3.5. I do miss some features - sure. Drag'n'drop of a icon into a text input field in konqueror opens the file instead of adding the location to the input field as it used to do. And there are more issues like that. But should we sacrifice stability for such rather minor things? If we want to target the larger userbase, we shouldn't. And I think, despite such minor issues, KDE 4.1 is good enough. It will be for me, and I'm rather critical.

Besides, KDE 4.2 will be out in another 6 months - not too long a time to wait, right? I'd rather see the developers focus on that release than backporting & heavily testing features for 4.1. Looking at the issue from the perspective of a slightly larger timeframe (1 year is enough already) would make you agree, I think. For long term progress (which ultimately benefits users most) development of TRUNK is most important. More important even than the perceived quality of the current release for endusers (see the 4.0 controversy) - as long as developers like to work on it. And they do, that's why we welcomed 166 new developers in 6 months ;-)

Hey I see your point, I'd rather have those features on my desktop YESTERDAY. But really, would you want to sacrifice future progress for it?

The problem is that although this will be KDE-4.1.0, the desktop and Plasma are really still in Beta. So, should be apply the proper release standards to Plasma or consider it to be a Beta (which it actually is) and continue to add features to the Plasma Beta that is included in KDE-4.1?

Have we reached the point where the API is stable enough that Plasma from TRUNK will run on KDE-4.1? If so, then perhaps we can establish separate releases of Plasma till it reaches the point that it is no longer a Beta.

That's what I did a couple of months ago. Just to see if I could get used to a desktop without any panels. I have just set that moving the mouse into the upper left corner of screen shows me all the windows from current desktop and moving it into the lower left corner shows me all the desktops. This replaced my taska manager and pager. Of course I can also quickly use the Alt+Tab to switch windows and Ctrl+F1, Ctrl+F2 .. to switch to desktops. the KRunner (Alt+F2) also nicely replaces the need for K menu. And I've put the clock on the Dashboard (Ctrl+F12). The only problem so far is the system tray. I have also have it on Dashboard, but when I bring it up the plasmoid is all black and icons are gone. And today I'm still usong this setup and like it a lot.